Mundane Methods is an innovative and original collection which will make a distinctive methodological and empirical contribution to research on the everyday. Bringing together a range of interdisciplinary approaches it provides a practical, hands-on approach for scholars interested in studying the mundane and exploring its potential. Divided into three key themes this volume explores methods for studying: materials and memories, emotions and senses, and mobilities and motion; with encounters, relationships, practices, spaces, temporalities and imaginaries cross-cutting throughout. In doing so, it draws on the work of a range of established and up-and-coming scholars researching the everyday, including human geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, urban planners, cartographers, and fashion historians. With empirical examples, practical tips, ethical considerations, and exercises.

Reviews

'This edited collection is transformative as a robust methodological toolkit for researchers seeking to clarify and demystify the 'everyday'. [...] A collection that wonderfully demonstrates that innovation and versatility are key for inspiring the sociological imagination.'
Kevin Judge, University of Stirling, The Sociological Review Magazine

Foreword: making the mundane remarkable
Les Back
1 Introduction: mundane methods and the extra-ordinary everyday
Sarah Marie Hall and Helen Holmes
Part I Materials and memories
2 Opening up material collections: adored, forgotten about, potent and mundane objects
Sophie Woodward
3 Listening to dress: unfolding oral history methods
Alison Slater
4 Memory Work: an approach to remembering and documenting everyday experiences
Karin Widerberg
5 Material relationships: object interviews as a means of studying everyday life
Helen Holmes
6: Food for thought? Material methods for exploring food and cooking
Sarah Marie Hall, Laura Pottinger, Megan Blake, Susanna Mills, Christian Reynolds and Wendy Wrieden
Part II Senses and emotions
7 The art of the ordinary: observational sketching as method
Sue Heath and Lynne Chapman
8 Sensing rhythm
Dawn Lyon
9 Everyday ethnographies and the art of eavesdropping: capturing ordinary human-animal encounters
Becky Tipper
10 Smell walking and mapping
Chris Perkins and Kate McLean
11 Auto-ethnography: managing multiple embodiments in the life drawing class
Rebecca Collins
Part III Mobilities and motion
12 Researching the run: methods for exploring mundane jographies
Simon Cook
13 Pedestrian practices: walking from the mundane to the marvellous
Morag Rose
14 Mobile methods for mundane mobilities: studying mobility scooters in a context of spatial mobility injustice
Thomas Birtchnell, Theresa Harada and Gordon Waitt
15 Water-based methods: conducting (self) interviews at sea for a surfer's view of surfing
Lyndsey Stoodley
16 Mobile methods for exploring young people's everynight mobilities
Samantha Wilkinson

Editors

Helen Holmes is a Research Fellow in Sociology and the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester

Sarah Marie Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Manchester